Brexit explained – En français

Quelques notes pour cette semaine chargée en Grande- Bretagne, pour les francophones.

Brexit explained – En français 

12 mars 2019 

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Sur la date du 29 mars…
Cette date est censée être celle de la sortie officielle du Royaume-Uni hors de l’Union Européenne. Négociée après le référendum du 23 juin 2016, elle est rapidement devenue intenable car l’UE et le Royaume-Uni devaient d’abord se mettre d’accord sur certains termes définissant leurs futures relations. Or, aucun accord définitif n’a été trouvé, car celui négocié par Theresa May avec Bruxelles ne cesse d’être rejeté par le Parlement britannique (celui-ci doit voter de nouveau la semaine du 11 mars 2019). Il semble probable qu’il soit à nouveau rejeté car il ne satisfait personne, ni les ultras du Brexit, ni les pro « Remain », encore très nombreux ; ni les Tories qui le trouvent compliqués et incertains, ni le Labour Party qui veut mettre fin à l’austérité mise en place par le gouvernement actuel.

Depuis janvier 2019, la date du 29 mars semble donc intenable. 

Après cette date (ou une autre, si la sortie est repoussée comme c’est probable), s’ouvre la véritable période de négociations sur le type de relations, notamment commerciales, entre le pays et l’UE pour les années à venir. Certains parlent d’une situation proche de celle de la Norvège, d’autres députés souhaitent que le Royaume-Uni reste dans l’union douanière européenne, pour ne pas payer de taxes à la consommation. Sinon, tous les accords devraient potentiellement être renégociés, ce qui pourrait prendre des années ! Si ces accords ne sont pas trouvés, les Britanniques pourraient perdre leurs droits de résidence et de travail dans l’UE et les Européens les mêmes droits au RU. Toutes les régulations commerciales devront aussi être renégociées. Et de nombreuses entreprises européennes et extra-européennes ayant un siège en Angleterre seront largement pénalisées financièrement et fiscalement si elles restent sur le territoire britannique.

Sur les blocages dans les négociations entre l’UE et la Grande Bretagne…

 
Beaucoup de choses mais surtout les négociations sur l’accord ont bloqué sur certains points en particulier, dont la place du RU dans l’Union douanière européenne, le sort des travailleurs étrangers, la question de la frontière entre la République d’Irlande et l’Irlande du Nord, territoire britannique.

Sur la frontière avec l’lrlande et les cas des Ecossais…

Le cas de la frontière entre la République d’Irlande et l’Irlande du Nord est très problématique. Surtout que plus de 50% des Irlandais du Nord ont voté contre le « Brexit ».

L’Irlande du Nord ayant été en guerre pendant des décennies, c’est l’UE qui a permis le succès de l’accord de paix du Vendredi Saint (The Good Friday Agreement), en 1998. Et l’absence de frontière entre les deux parties de l’île a enfin permis de la pacifier. Les deux Irlandes ne souhaitent dont pas voir revenir la frontière. Les Irlandais du Nord, qui sont britanniques et les Irlandais de la République d’Irlande voyagent presque tous quotidiennement des deux côtés, travaillent et vivent avec l’autre communauté. Or, si le RU quitte l’EU, cette frontière deviendra la frontière la plus occidentale de l’Union et donc une zone de trafic à haut risque, comme la frontière entre la Pologne et l’Ukraine.

Donc l’Union réclame une frontière, ce que personne ne veut sur place. Le gouvernement britannique a proposé la solution du « back stop », c’est-à-dire une absence de frontière fermée pendant une durée déterminée, mais personne n’est d’accord sur cette durée, ni sur la façon de contrôler les passages de biens et de personnes sans frontière ni douanes… Les Unionistes irlandais refusent l’idée d’un back stop indéterminé qui remettrait à long terme en cause l’appartenance de l’Irlande du Nord au Royaume-Uni.

Je me suis rendue à plusieurs reprises en Irlande du Nord pour réaliser des reportages à ce sujet. La question est très problématique sur place car l’île est petite et la plupart de ses habitants ne se rendent jamais en Grande-Bretagne mais souvent dans l’autre partie de l’île d’Irlande. Cela crée déjà des tensions et risque de supprimer de nombreux emplois, des sources d’approvisionnement, etc. Or l’Irlande du Nord est largement dépendante des importations. Certains craignent la résurgence du conflit et des revendications d’indépendances de Irlandais du Nord ou de rattachement de l’Irlande du Nord à la République d’Irlande. 

En ce qui concerne l’Ecosse, où je suis allée à deux reprises depuis juin 2016, plus de 62% de la population a voté contre le Brexit, et la région est généralement et de longue date très pro-européenne. Elle dispose d’une large autonomie et de son propre parlement, et sa politique diffère souvent de celle de Londres. Les tensions sont donc récurrentes et beaucoup d’Ecossais souhaitent obtenir l’indépendance, et - si le Brexit se produit enfin - demander à réintégrer l’UE. En 2014, les Ecossais avaient organisé un référendum sur cette indépendance et le « non » l’a emporté à 55%. Mais à présent, les raisons de désirer une séparation sont bien plus nombreuses et de plus en plus de députés demandent un second référendum. Le sentiment général est que l’Ecosse veut désormais quitter le Royaume-Uni, ce qui mettrait fin à une union datant de plus de trois siècles (1707), soit bien plus longues que l’unité de la Belgique, de l’Allemagne ou de l’Italie par exemple.

Sur les conséquences potentielle de cette situation au R-U…

Ils sont nombreux. D’abord les habitants des régions les plus pauvres, qui risquent de perdre les fonds d’aide de l’UE, dont la Cornouaille dans le sud-est de l’Angleterre, et le sud du Pays de Galle, des zones agricoles appauvries. Puis les régions désindustrialisées du nord de l’Angleterre, où le chômage est déjà plus élevé qu’ailleurs. Et bien sûr, les 3 millions d’Européens qui vivent au Royaume-Uni et risquent de perdre tous leurs droits : droit de travailler sans permis de travail, liberté de circulation, droit au regroupement familial, etc. Cela affecte des secteurs fragiles de l’économie britanniques, comme les centres de santé, où les emplois de base, comme les aides-soignants, sont largement fournis par des travailleurs européens. De plus, de nombreuses entreprises, notamment américaines et chinoises, ont déjà délocalisé leurs sièges sociaux pour les installer dans une ville de l’EU comme Bruxelles ou Paris, car elles commercent avec les 27 bien plus qu’avec la GB seule. Cela entraîne de nouvelles pertes d’emploi.

Sur les conséquences potentielle pour le reste de l’Europe…

Les négociations entre l’UE et la GB se sont révélées poussives et négatives, ce qui ne peut qu’affaiblir l’UE intérieurement mais aussi diplomatiquement. Les velléités d’indépendance de l’Ecosse et le problème de la souveraineté britannique sur Gibraltar en Espagne ont réveillé les questions catalanes et basques, peut-être même corses. Mais ce qui est sûr est que la situation a probablement découragé tous les autres Etats-membres d’envisager un retrait et discrédité les promesses de retrait sans encombre ou libérateur, telles celle de François Asselineau ou Marine Le Pen. Le Brexit est devenu un véritable cauchemar pour les Britanniques, occupant l’essentiel du débat public, à un moment où de nombreux activistes espéraient combattre le changement climatique ou l’évasion fiscale…

Sur la position du Labour Party 
Je participe à un podcast sur le Brexit, Remainiacs et le sujet y est brûlant. Le dirigeant du parti travailliste, Jeremy Corbyn fait campagne contre l’austérité du gouvernement actuel mais pas vraiement contre le Brexit. Il a toujours été frileux quant à l’UE et beaucoup lui reproche d’avoir imposé ses sentiments anti-européens à tout le parti, dont les membres et les députés sont, selon tous les sondages, à plus de 80% pro-européens. Le leader défend une ligne protectrice des ouvriers et donc contre les grandes entreprises, et pense qu’au fond sa politique serait plus simple à mettre en place hors de l’UE. Cependant, le Brexit a provoqué une chute de la livre sterling et un départ de nombreux investisseurs, entraînant un cercle vicieux pour l’économie. Plusieurs députés ont donc quitté le parti début mars. Le numéro deux du parti a promis de soutenir l’idée d’un second référendum, qui est promue par les Libéraux Démocrates et de nombreuses associations depuis plus d’un an, mais même à ce sujet le Labour se montre divisé, et Corbyn toujours frileux.

Sur un second référendum…

Le groupe nommé « Best for Britain » et la campagne pour un « People’s Vote » appellent en effet à un second référendum sur le Brexit, qui proposerait peut-être plusieurs options dont celle de rester dans l’Union européenne. Ils sont soutenus par les « Lib Dems » et une large partie de la société civile, surtout dans les grandes villes. Ils font campagne tous les jours devant le Parlement et dans d’autres villes. Ils ont organisé une manifestation le 20 octobre dernier, qui a réuni près de 800 000 personnes à Londres, et une autre à nouveau le 23 mars. Mais pour l’instant, le gouvernement refuse obstinément un second référendum. 

Cependant, si l’accord de sortie de Theresa May est rejeté par les députés entre le 11 et le 14 mars, le second référendum pourrait se révéler indispensable pour sortir de l’impasse. Et le gouvernement britannique devrait alors demander un report de la date de sortie, du 29 mars au 29 mai probablement ou peut-être même à fin juin. Mais dans ce cas, le pays serait dans l’obligation de participer aux élections européennes de mai 2019. Ce qui rajoute un défi supplémentaire, et non des moindres. 

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Mélissa Chemam est une journaliste indépendante, bilingue, travaillant régulièrement pour la BBC, la radio allemande Deutsche Welle, la radio canadienne CBC, le magazine anglais The Bristol Cable, entre autres média. Après avoir été correspondante à Miami, Londres, Nairobi, puis Bangui, elle est basée entre Londres et Bristol, et voyage régulièrement en Italie, France et Afrique du Nord. Elle est l'une des invités podcast 'Remainiacs' sur les conséquences du Brexit.

Best Seller on Amazon!! 'Out of the Comfort Zone', by Melissa Chemam

A reader's review. He perfectly understood the book!!!

Best Seller on Amazon!!
Out of the Comfort Zone
Melissa Chemam

The last time there was a collaboration of such cultural enormity between the UK and France was the building of Concorde. Thank Tangent Books for picking up on this text and what a prize. Melissa Chemam is giving us two books for the price of one. On one level it’s easily accessible, a good read, a real page turner but kicking it up a gear it has an academic quality and would be a brilliant research tool, to this genre, time and place. 

Bristol has a special place in my heart and Massive Attack has accompanied me over thousands of miles in many dodgy motors, but I could always rely on them. There is something exceptional about Massive Attack even before a superb chronicler as Chemam gets near them. I remember seeing Grant around St Pauls and in the local pub off Jamaica Street. The brilliance walked amongst us and that counts for a lot. Built from the ground up on a foundation of hard learnt experience and this comes over in the writing. This book is Bristol in many ways, the diverse music and cultures coming together and creating something truly unique. The real deal. 

Everything works: The cover, I think it’s brilliant and I’m reasonably qualified I work at a major London gallery, the content and the context. 

Call me dramatic but Out of the Comfort Zone is a message of hope to a younger generation, that you can get things together, much is still possible. Not because of… but in spite of.

Gerry King (c)

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Remainiacs: The calm before the storm... (March 8)

Remainiacs podcast: special "Week before the storm": on Britain, Brexit, "Ladies for Leave", migrations in the UK, and even a bit of Massive Attack... 

#Europhile #Eurochild #radiogirl

Tomorrow's podcast is available today… if you're backing Remainiacs on @Patreon. 

It's "calm before the storm" week with

@pimlicat

@rosamundmtaylor

@ingridoliver100

&

@melissachemam

Sign up and listen up! (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-podcast-for-25200787) patreon.com/posts/new-podc…

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All the episodes are online here:

https://audioboom.com/channel/remainiacs-podcast

Ahead of International Women's Day 2019

Hello people. A bit of politics and feminism for tonight... 

As you know, in two days is International Women's Day 2019, on March 8, a date that has been of trememdous important in my little life. 

-On March 8, 2002, I wrote a dissertation on women's rights in French history to get into my master of political studies and received a 18/20 for that essay... This obviously changed my life. 

-It has never been easy since then to be a woman in journalism, as you can imagine. 


-Lots of harsh bosses, closed doors, and nepotism in there... 


-Culminating last year, with a very tough boss, and that day, when three men met to discuss my work without me, on that week of Women's Day, while I had done 100% of it on my own... 


-Luckily, this year, March is an utter month of empowerment and there is so much to celebrate!!


-It starts with our 100% female team at BBC World Service's #Parentland. More here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttvh

-And of course, my book if finally out in the UK, in my own English version, re-written, edited and proofread by myself, because, hey, "on n'est jamais mieux servi que par soi-même". Hashtag: "One Woman Band"...

-Finally, on Friday, I'm a guest in the new edition of the Remainiacs podcast!! To talk about politics, the future of the UK and the EU and perception of migrations...
You can listen here:
https://audioboom.com/channel/remainiacs-podcast


-More in the coming days!! Radio, articles, interviews...

Thank you, March 2019.


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In visuals:

Parentland

Book

Remainiacs

'Massive Attack - Out of the Comfort Zone' - An Excerpt

I wrote this for The Honest Ulsterman, a great Northern Irish literary journal, who asked me to share an excerpt of the book.
'A Magazine of Revolution', as they call themselves.
Enjoy.

Massive Attack

Out of the Comfort Zone - An Excerpt

Melissa Chemam

Why Massive Attack?

Over the past ten years, as a freelance journalist, I have been living and travelling in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, covering African-European relations, migration issues, the refugee crisis and later on… In August 2014, I read an article about one of my favourite bands, Massive Attack, as they were travelling to Lebanon, to perform at the Byblos International Festival and to visit Palestinian youth they support, in a refugee camp in Burj El Barajneh, in a southern suburb of Beirut. 

For months, this story stayed with me. I found their words so genuine… I was listening to Mezzanine on repeat… And 100th Window, their post-9/11 album. I read a lot about them. I thought about Bristol and saw how the city’s history obviously shaped the 1980's music scene, with its transition from post-punk rebellion to a hip-hop reinvention, via the sound of reggae. And when I talked to a friend who is a writer and music journalist, he began trying to convince me I could write about music too. He had an idea for me in France. But I already had my own by then...

I left for Bristol in February 2015. Since then, I’ve met with so many artists from the city, so many lovely people, that it became my second home. An independent French publisher soon after gave me a contract to write this book. I had almost “carte blanche”. So I centred the book on Massive Attack, but there was such deep meaning in what I was discussing with some of the members I met, or with historians, artists, friends of the band. I quickly felt I was writing a sort of counter-history of the United Kingdom in the past 50 to 200 years. 

A few of these artists convinced me a year later to write an English version of the book. It wasn’t easy, even less easy to convince people to publish it here, without changing my own ideas, in the middle of the worst moments of the Brexit anti-European fury! But I finally finished it. 

It starts with Blue Lines, of course, Massive Attack’s first album. Then it goes back in time to dig into the origins of the “Bristol Sound”, this mix of reggae bass lines, hip-hop/rap and samples, with soulful vocals and a local accent… A new trend, which later evolved into one of the most defining sounds of the 1990's, whether you call it “trip-hop”, “down tempo” or “spacey electronic music”, influencing Björk as much as Madonna and David Bowie! From the late 1990's, Massive Attack had to mutate and ended up splitting… Creative differences. And the two remaining members became increasingly mysterious and highly conscious, politically hyper-aware, in a way very artists have in our times. 

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'Massive Attack - Out of the Comfort Zone' - An Excerpt

Chapter 6

The Birth Of A New Form Of Band (1989-91)

“Suddenly, Massive Attack are happening,” wrote Miranda Sawyer in Q magazine in March 1991. “That ‘all-important’ critical acclaim! Even seminal world rockers U2 want to meet them!”… From the caves of Bristol’s underground and forbidden parties, the non-musicians emerged worldwide in only a few months…

From 1989, the work that Massive Attack’s three core members started took a more definite shape, and it became clear for Cameron McVey and Jonny Dollar that an album was on its way, and not an ordinary album. Produced without a definite plan in mind, their art, which involves “copying and pasting” from an extraordinary playlist of references, seemed to work magically, just like 3D’s art of collage at the time.

Meanwhile in Bristol, the street art movement was on the back burner because of increasing police surveillance. In March 1989, 72 young graffiti writers were arrested in Operation Anderson, after policemen found a contact book belonging to an artist with all his friends’ phone numbers. Some of those arrested stopped writing graffiti; others carried on spraying, going further underground and found themselves in open conflict with the authorities. Others started spraying outside Bristol. London became a good place to hide and try new things.

3D found himself more deeply involved in music. His art remained at the core of the visual aspect of the collective, but for now, Massive Attack’s priority was to produce their very own sound, beyond the DJ approach, a sound that could call itself a proper different and unique genre.

Very early on, Massive Attack sensed that the different approach they were looking for would be found in the vocal parts of the recordings. One point seemed certain from the start, the band wouldn’t have a lead singer. Collaborations were at the core of what they were creating, as DJs and as rappers, and they were looking for guest vocalists to complete their diverse identity in sound.

Find your own voice

Searching for a soul voice to add some softness to their mainly male influences, the idea of working with a female vocalist seemed obvious. The band wrote more songs with Shara Nelson, whose warm and powerful voice suited the slow tempo of their first compositions and brought a touch of melancholy, some contrast with the use of a beat box.

In 1990, Shara worked with Massive Attack while they were composing a track to be temporarily named ‘Just a Matter of Time’, a very slow and mellow hip-hop oriented track, featuring a few rapping vocals from 3D. They added a humming sound performed by Shara. The song finally wasn’t included on Blue Lines, or on any other record, but it was used in a first promo video, produced independently and directed by Roger Pomphrey. Born in Bristol in 1954, guitarist for Eurythmics around 1980/82, Roger started working in films and music videos a few years later. For Massive Attack, he created a film in black and white shot in Bristol, mostly outdoors, taking viewers into the feel of the city, from the docks to the zoo, as well as into the band’s mental universe, in a film full of humour.

The film starts with a close shot of an envelope dropping through a letterbox. Mushroom picks up the mail, which appears to be an invitation to a party. Inside the envelope is a card bearing the word “Massive” surmounted by a flame logo. He brings the card into an old-fashioned sitting room and hands it to an elderly woman whose head is shaking with spasms as she sits in an armchair… She doesn’t seem to be able to understand the message.

Fade to black: a cupboard door gets open by the toweringly high Daddy G, picking a blouson and looking, with hesitation, for the perfect headgear for the day. Hat? Cap with his stage name on? Beanie hat? Yes, beanie with a ‘G’ it will be. Meanwhile, the screen is progressively showing shots from the football stadium, where a worker is repainting the field’s white lines… Before he leaves his house, Daddy G picks up the phone to ring a friend who he calls ‘Jack’ (we’ll soon discover the members of the crew all call each other ‘Jack’, including Shara), looking to find their mate Tricky, unsuccessfully.

The next scene is set in the stadium. A caretaker, cleaning the terraces, wakes up a crumpled, sleeping body; and 3D emerges from under a hat, holding a football programme. He avidly asks: “What’s the score?” Only to be answered: “City beat 2-0 but the match finished two days ago”… And the film moves on indoors to Shara Nelson, singing in her bathroom, writing down some music notes on a sheet that she ends up drowning with her tap’s water. Meanwhile, outdoors, 3D joins Mushroom, playing with an electric car, in front of his house, asking him if… he has seen Tricky. D then proposes going to the zoo – which leads to interesting close shots of the animals. But Mushroom, for some irrational reasons, seems to think that they don’t have enough time. So they just go for a walk. The other side of town, Daddy G walks to the Montpelier Hotel. While wandering with 3D, Mushroom suddenly decides he wants to have a haircut… “Bristol is a city where we are easily distracted”, the band members later regularly explained to the press. Here is it illustrated!

Meanwhile, Shara is heading to her kitchen, when the phone rings: Daddy G is calling, looking for… Tricky. For Mushroom, a large part of the afternoon is spent at the hairdresser with 3D, while Shara is getting ready to go out. All of them are reunited later around a friend’s dinner table. Shara Nelson deeply sighs when 3D asks her… if she’s seen Tricky. “No!” she replies, slightly annoyed. The film is often mentioned under the name “Where is Tricky?” in Bristol. The crowd starts drinking and chatting, while a tarantula is wandering around the candlesticks. And when the host proposes a toast, someone suddenly knocks on the door… It’s easy to guess who is arriving late.

The generally relaxed atmosphere of the film is revealing of the daily life that the musicians led in Bristol, sending flyers, perfecting their look, wandering, watching football, composing music, also featuring visual representations of different parts of the city, from Montpelier to the Harbourside, and the… zoo. Bristol’s underground universe is completely summarised in the film, showing the diversity of the group of friends, from different ages and backgrounds.

The video also reveals traits from the main characters’ personalities: the elusive, solitary and uncontrollable Tricky hardly gets to meet the cool and charismatic Daddy G; Mushroom is mostly silent, looking away in most circumstances; while 3D is voluble and fickle, most of the time hiding his feelings behind a forced serious gaze, then suddenly bubbly and jokingly warm. Surrounded at the dinner table by Shara, Grant, Willy Wee and Mushroom, he is the one standing out from the crowd, with his light eyes and skin tone, his angelic face most often artificially hardened by an unwillingness to smile.

Massive Attack paid a beautiful homage to Roger Pomphrey, after the announcement of his passing, early in 2014: “A lovely man and a brilliant filmmaker. He inspired us to treat each video opportunity as a movie making experience and paved the way for collaborations with other great directors.”

Musically, ‘Just A Matter Of Time’ – which will never be released – already sounds very different from the few Wild Bunch recordings produced in 1987 and 88: its style is definitely hip-hop but the rhythm is much slower, framed around a soft beatbox and a sweet looping melody, accompanied by Shara’s humming voice for the first two thirds and ending in a slow rap performed by 3D. Some of its lyrics later reappeared partly in the track named ‘Eurochild’, on Massive Attack’s second album.

Shara continued to work with the band for another year, composing a few melodies and writing lyrics. She is featured on their first album on ‘Daydreaming’, along with 3D and Tricky, ‘Safe From Harm’ and ‘Unfinished Sympathy’.

‘Daydreaming’ was the first track finished for the album, followed by ‘Safe From Harm’. The latter was originally developed by the three core band members, quite early on, based on a sample of the song ‘Stratus’, written by the Panamanian American jazzman and drummer Billy Cobham, for his album Spectrum, from 1973. The sample, suggested by Mushroom, is used as a rhythmic basis. A genius idea that brings a unique feel to the song. Other samples in ‘Safe From Harm’ include a percussion part from ‘Good Old Music’ by the band Funkadelic,elements from ‘Chameleon’ by Herbie Hancock, and a sentence from the lyrics of ‘Looking Back’ by American soul funk singer Johnny ‘Guitar’Watson, written in 1961. The song’s originality is taken to a higher level with the mix of rap and soul vocals. ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ took shape a few months later in 1990.

Massive Attack also had from the start its own voice in its main rapper and lyricist, 3D. In an article entitled “The Bristol Bunch”, published in February 1991 in The Face magazine, John McCready underlined that what makes this music sound very different is “the polite West Country tones of 3D”. D commented in the same article: “In a way I was just fired by the originality of the old-school rappers (…). The accent comes easy. I have to check myself sometimes before it gets too Bristolian and we end up sounding like the Wurzels.” And the journalist concluded: “Hip hop heroes or Bristol’s answer to Pink Floyd? Either way, Massive Attack are the sound of 1991.”

Lyrically, 3D’s plays on words fitted his reflexive social awareness. He mixed references to his Sony headphones and Studio One with mentions of his passions – from football to graffiti, quoting the Beatles, telling about the band’s daily routines, as well as the urban environment they grew up in and the worries linked to the Thatcher government. Meanwhile, on top of hip-hop, the band were incorporating another major influence: reggae music.

Kingston Calling: Jamaican-Bristolian blending

Another featured voice on Massive Attack’s first album came from Bristol too. Tricky was then collaborating with Nellee Hooper, Smith & Mighty, Mark Stewart and with 3D. He liked to follow his own path, though, never really joining any band completely, feeling different from the former members of the Wild Bunch, claiming his origins from Knowle West as a mark of identity. He often declared that “even Grant would never come to Knowle West.” Tricky’s incomparable voice owes a lot to his strong, popular and colloquial Bristolian accent, with a pinch of Jamaican tone.

Tricky wrote with D the raps featured in ‘Daydreaming’, using his talent in “storytelling” rap: “Attitude is cool degrees below zero / Up against the wall behaving like De Niro / Tricky’s performing taking his phono”. He also mentions the social context a while later: “Yes Tricky kid I check my situation / Maggie this Maggie that Maggie means inflation”. And adds details on daily violence: “Wise guys get protection when they carry a knife / They shouldn’t have been born they’re making me yawn”, while 3D brings a more hopeful note: “We’re natives of the massive territory and we’re proud / Get peaceful in the dance, no death or glory and the crowd / The problemain’t a different kind of skin, Tricks / I love my neighbour I don’t wait for the Olympics”.

Tricky and 3D also worked on lyrics for the songs ‘Blue Lines’ and ‘Five Man Army’, on which they’re joined by Daddy G, Willy Wee and Horace Andy. The reggae singer, born Horace Hinds, in Kingston, Jamaica, on February 19, 1951, is the third main guest vocalist on the album. Grant considers Horace as a legend and knows by heart his first album, Skylarking, released in 1972, after a first confidential single in 1967, ‘This is a Black Man’s Country’, recorded at the young age of 16. Horace joined in 1970 the mythical Studio One, founded in 1962 by Clement Seymour Dodd, aka Coxsone, and nicknamed “the Jamaican Motown”. Horace came to define the label’s sound, alongside Bob Marley. In 1985, Horace started living between Jamaica and Ladbroke Grove, in London, where he got to meet Cameron McVey. His collaboration with Massive Attack brought to the band the reggae feel that they were looking for.

Massive Attack sent to Horace the basic demo of a song called ‘One Love’. The elaboration of the final version of the track was key to the making of the album. The basics came from three main samples. One is from ‘You Know, You Know’ by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a jazz-rock fusion band formed in New York City in 1971 by the British guitarist John McLaughlin with Panamanian-American drummer Billy Cobham, Irish bassist Rick Laird, Czechoslovakian keyboardist Jan Hammer, and American violinist Jerry Goodman, later joined by Ralphe Armstrong on bass guitar. And two other short samples came from ‘Ike’s Mood I’ by Isaac Hayes (from his …To Be Continued album, released in 1970). Massive Attack added a slow beatbox effect and scratching sounds, but with the intention of keeping it simple.

Horace recorded the vocals partly in Kingston and Massive Attack mixed the track in Bristol. It sounded like a reggae song without a baseline, underlined Robert Del Naja, which is the opposite of what you normally associate reggae with. Therefore, ‘One Love’, more than a reinterpretation by the band of a reggae theme, became a 1990 Bristol song with a reggae inspiration.

In total, the band worked on Blue Lines for about eight months, with a break at the end of the year 1990 and the first of many career splits, this time taking the shape of a virtual coup d’état when Mushroom announced that he wanted Peter D. Rose, close to Rob Smith and Ray Mighty, to co-create the album with him. D and G left the studio in dismay. Luckily, they all later found a common ground and continued working on the album. 

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Freelance journalist, writer, reporter and radio producer with the BBC World Service & Deutsche Welle, travel-lover passionate about Africa, Europe, literature, music, arts, Melissa Chemam was born in Paris. She studied at the Institute of Political Studies and has been working in various media houses in the past 15 years. Since 2003, she has lived in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia) and in Central Africa. She also travelled to Italy, Haiti, the Balkans/Caucasus, Tunisia, Liberia, South Africa, India, Mexico, Niger, Turkey… 

She writes about African-European relations, refugee rights, politics, social change, music, art & politics, news & culture from around the world. 

Her first non-fiction book, Massive Attack – Out of the Comfort Zone, on the band and their city, Bristol, is published in the UK in early March 2019. 

People can purchase the book at the following: 

Waterstones:

 https://www.waterstones.com/book/massive-attack/melissa-chemam/9781910089729

Amazon:

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Massive-Attack-Out-Comfort-Zone/dp/1910089729

Rough Trade:

 https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/books/melissa-chemam-massive-attack-out-of-the-comfort-zone

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Bristol interview - 24/7

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MUSIC / FEATURES

EXPLORING MASSIVE ATTACK’S BRISTOL ROOTS AS CITY GETS READY FOR HUGE HOMECOMING SHOWS

By MARTIN BOOTH, Wednesday Feb 27, 2019

Massive Attack’s gigs on Friday and Saturday in a huge temporary 14,000-capacity arena coincide with the publication of a new book looking at the band, their Bristol roots and global political outlook.

Until Bristol gets our long-awaited arena, the city’s biggest bands such as Massive Attack will either play in outdoor venues like Queen Square and the Downs like they did in 2003 and 2016; or be forced to build their own venues like the band are doing this week as they celebrate the 21st anniversary of the release of their seminal album Mezzanine with two shows on consecutive nights at the ‘Steel Yard’ on the former Filton Airfield.

The gigs promise to be a completely new audio and visual production designed by Robert Del Naja, using custom audio reconstructed from the original album’s samples and influences. It’s a unique response by a band not known for doing things the usual way. Last year, they encoded Mezzanine into DNA and later made a limited number of spray cans containing the DNA-encoded audio within matt black paint, with each can containing approximately one million copies of the album.

Among the audience in her adopted hometown will be French-born journalist and writer Melissa Chemam, whose book about Massive Attack published originally in French in 2016 will finally be published this month in an English translation for the first time, bringing the story right up to date with the breakout success of Idles.

Melissa appreciates the irony of a Frenchwoman writing the so-far definitive telling of Bristol’s biggest band and delving deeply into the city’s musical heritage. But she also believes that it was her ‘outsider’ status that enabled her to get access to some of the key players in the story who were (on the whole) more than happy to tell her their own parts of a complex story.

One of Melissa’s earliest exposures to Massive Attack was seeing the video to Protection, which was directed by French filmmaker Michel Gondry. Melissa remembers thinking how much more “futuristic” than any other band at that time Massive Attack sounded, “but it was not the type of band where you had a poster of them or you knew their names or you were a fan of them as people, it was more about the atmosphere… so it was an intriguing, mysterious world for me”.

So Melissa became a fan, but a fan content to wait years between album releases, she explained to Bristol24/7 over a coffee at 404 Not Found at the bottom of St Michael’s Hill; a cafe which in a previous incarnation was Wild Bunch hangout Special K’s, close to both the flat of Grant Marshall and famous former club The Dug Out, where the Wild Bunch – the loose collective out of which Massive Attack would spawn – made their name.   

In the summer of 2014, in the midst of another long period between new material, Massive Attack played as part of the Fete de l’Humanité in France, raising money for refugees in Palestine and elsewhere. “It came as something quite striking to me that those guys weren’t promoting anything, hadn’t had an album out in four years – they had had 20 years of fantastic career but been very discreet at the same time. And there they were, doing something extremely engaging and catching up with world news, getting it all.”

A music journalist friend of Melissa’s had asked her to work on a book project about a French story, but she politely declined – instead offering her own idea about writing something about Bristol, connecting the city’s Caribbean roots, power, music and art and politics. The first person that she managed to talk to as part of the research for the book was Del Naja, aka 3D. Later she returned to Bristol where she spoke to long-time Massive Attack producer and collaborator Neil Davidge; and later still met Tricky in Paris before he played a show at Le Bataclan.

“I was not from here,” Melissa explained. “But I was genuine, I was not trying to make a big commercial thing about them, I wasn’t asking them to sign anything or to give me photos, or to do the official biography. They all understood it would have my own point of view, very much linked with the social background and the political history of Bristol and the UK.”

Melissa Chemam originally wrote her book about Massive Attack in French

The original aim for the book, Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone, was to show through the prism of Bristol’s music scene how much the UK had changed, and how much immigrant culture – once in the background – “finally got to be the superstars”. Melissa’s parents are from North Africa so in a way she shares a bit of this same story, having grown up in Paris during the 90s which had a hip-hop scene mainly based on sampling that soon left the banlieues for the mainstream.

For Melissa, Bristol has a “complicated relationship” with Massive Attack. Speaking as a fan, she thinks of them as a band whose every album like it is their first, never resting on their laurels or replicating some of their most commercially successful work – of which Mezzanine is the prime example. It’s somewhat of a paradox therefore that for the first time with this month’s shows in Filton (part of a UK and Ireland tour), 3D, Daddy G and co are harking back to a different era.

Del Naja said that “it’s going to be a one-off piece of work; our own personalised nostalgia nightmare head trip”, with Melissa admitting that she was “a bit surprised” that Massive Attack wanted to celebrate the anniversary of Mezzanine, with the tour featuring Elizabeth Fraser, who performed vocals on three tracks from Mezzanine and toured with the band in 2006. “First of all it’s the album that almost destroyed them. And then, they’re very anti-nostalgia.” And playing in a purpose-built venue? “I know! This is the thing I like about them, they’re a bit funny.”

The band famously boycotted the Colston Hall due its name being associated with notorious slave trader Edward Colston, and led calls for the venue’s name to be changed. Del Naja also came out publicly in support for the need for a city centre arena, releasing a statement last year that said: “We need an arena that belongs to Bristol, that is at Bristol’s public transport hub and contributes to city centre life. Something that the city can be proud of, that will inspire future generations of musicians. Rather than going back to square one with an untested plan for a big shed in a car park in the suburbs.”

While Melissa was writing her book and in the time it took to secure its publication in English, Bristol’s arena saga was a similarly long drawn-out process, but one that unlike the book is still to reach a conclusion. “The band were very supportive of the idea of having an arena in Temple Meads,” Melissa said. But this idea that everyone wanted was completely sabotaged. It was completely betrayed. It was obvious that people want it. Maybe it was too expensive, but it was promised for 15 years and finally it’s not going to happen. We’re going to have students that are Londoners sat in front of Temple Meads station instead. It’s the worst decision I’ve ever heard. What can you do? I understand that a stadium might sound like luxury, but it’s still music and sport, it’s what can join the south and north of Bristol.”

Massive Attack have long been spoken of as the ideal band to play the first show at a future Bristol Area, but Melissa thinks that arena shows do not show them at their best. In the year that Massive Attack played on the Downs, she saw the band play eight shows, including in a tiny venue in Dublin, then in Paris twice including Zenith – “the perfect venue for them”, what she describes as a bit bigger than the Roundhouse – as well as in London’s Hyde Park, her highlight of that particular tour.

For the book, she spoke to dozens of people. “I see it as just collecting the truth and putting it together. It’s really crazy that no one did it before me. I’m really proud that I’ve helped, and I also know that some people have reconnected because of it. Because I met so many people. They were talking to each other, like, ‘Have you met this weird French writer?’”

Massive Attack are playing at the Steel Yard at the former Filton Airfield on March 1 & 2. Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone by Melissa Chemam is published by Tangent Books on March 4. Melissa will be launching the book with a talk and a DJ set by Queen Bee at Rough Trade on Nelson Street on March 2 from 2pm.

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